A/Muse Me/You

could be broken into shorter lines, but I am not doing it

sharp metaphors shower down silver bullet stilettos
click click clicking on polished concrete tablets, wet
alive revived new ways of blood-letting it all go, baby can you hear it?
I can hear rats tat tat on window pains cold forged barbs aimed
at steely-hearted souls and hard-hearted heels who are our muses
courted, vied for like '(my) first draft (is finished, baby) players'
well known for skills honed in fields strewn with fine minds
that just need a poke to explode heart for art's sake

tough oft rough traded woo pitching muses wanted to keep full
acid-tongue tipped styluses, etching more muse infused, scripted venom

we demand all their waking / sleeping sensations to be directed at us
for the hours we need to begin breathing on our own again.
they are a fix, a tool, night school refresher course- not obsessions
we know where they begin and we control their ends- grains of sand
in our heads, sometimes beds hoping for cultured pearls not just stains
mental quickies desiring to inspire should read the caveat lector line before they sign
there are no guarantees of kindness of any kind just a merry go-go around
of peeling back facades, blaring reflections of each other, virtually
all over, the closer the better, pages soaked with money shots don't reveal the players
so they are reusable like stock images to which we all own the rights

muse, amused or abused with no promises of privacy just emotional piracy
high jacked for high times then be set free willingly with no regrets
just on to the next emotional wrecking party

your tableau is waiting

Reviews

[JR]

Ilene, there's a huge difference, I think, between the poem that is born on the page, then refined to be spoken, and the poem that is born on the lips, then written down. This is of the latter category, and is just amazing. Oh, the ANGER, the rage! You have such a great sense of sound, "click click clicking," "rats tat tat," these descriptions hum and pop, they draw the reader in and echo in their heads, working backwards to the ear. So nicely done, and such an art.

As far as the intro lines go, they are very effective, especially with images like, "silver bullet stilettos," and, "current new ways of blood-letting," this all comes through the screen so clearly... and your reader takes notice.

I have nothing to suggest to improve this, Ilene, it comes at the reader fast and hard, and you don't need to be speaking for your voice to translate. It reads well the first time, so much the rant, and gives off more and more depth with each subsequent reading (I read it four times before the review, and will read it, uh, probably forty more times before I'm done). That's the Gift right there, in a nutshell...

[Ben Ther]

I would love to have watched your facial expressions as you wrote / journeyed through this poem.

[shel]

we demand all their waking / sleeping sensations to be directed at us
for the hours we need to begin breathing on our own again.
they are a fix, a tool, night school refresher course- not obsessions
we know where they begin and we control their ends- grains of sand
in our heads, sometimes beds hoping for cultured pearls not just stains
mental quickies desiring to inspire should read the caveat lector line before they sign
there are no guarantees of kindness of any kind just a merry go-go around
of peeling back facades, blaring reflections of each other

--that was an awful lot to paste in here, but i really loved that part. ;)
again, your writing style (sharp & urgent come to mind) is something that maybe lends itself to a 'rushed' reading, there is that pace-- pushing/pulling the reader to the end...but it really demands (i think) multiple reads. which i've done, and will continue to do, lol. wish i could articulate what i felt reading this...to me it felt like a kind of 'hunting & harvesting' for/of muses, if that makes any sense. and it definitely struck a chord w/me.

a poke to explode heart for art's sake (!) yes, and onto the next emotional wrecking party...

[Kaykay]

very good I like this very much

[Bohemian Cowboy]

Once again a wake up call--who has ears to hear?--from first line to the last...vibrant, reminded me of some of the old days when I would read Jeremiah stoned on some fine weed--one of the original slammers--love, loved it. Woke me up, got me moving--I'm ready...

[PianoandPage]

mmm i never get tired of the whole "my muse is my fucktoy and it's deep and it's shallow and i love it and i hate losing it and it's my right to be selfish and at the same time it is competely my culture and my life and my drug and my madness" poems. this was a great stream-of-consciouness piece and had some killer lines.

in fields strewn with fine minds
that just need a poke to explode heart for art's sake

one of my favorites

[Paul Corman Roberts]

Gosh, I've never seen the guilty pleasure that is WC summed up so nicely. I see why you and Lola make such a great team...wordplay masters both of you...really entertaining stuff...and this is all very useful when one is an insomniac too.

I like the image of the "night school refresher course" ... but I'd like to see you maybe somehow weave the image of a bar or nightclub into this as well, since community college is a disco with books after all and there's an awful lot of these folks in this virtual cafe looking for dates (I had a virtual friend quit because of that.) You're dancing around it in the first stanza when you write:

"our muses
courted, vied for like '(my) first draft (is finished, baby) players'
well known for skills honed in fields strewn with fine minds
that just need a poke to explode heart for art's sake"

Just a suggestion.

I got a big sack of weed yesterday. I'm so happy. I won't be able to check WTF this Sunday, but I'm hoping to drop in the following Sunday.

[Fabian G. Franklin]

What an amazing piece of work. I love the "rats tat tat" and the use of "window pain" instead of pane. the alliteration is, once again, stunning.

[C. Marie Says, "do..]

I love it! Reminfds me of late nights and one-night stands. Pretty hot in here! WHEW! ;) I loved this-i had to read it out loud, as the words fell freely from my tongue. :)

[Eric]

I hear The Beats in this (snap, snap, snap). And speaking of hearing, this piece is audible. Your word choices make me hear... And when read outloud, it jerks, punches and demands attention. You make me hear what your saying... violently.

This is pure passion with periods. And I certainly hope the last phrase is totally yours because it crosses the line of creative and approaches genius. That's not flattery, that's what I see.

Improvements? Consider removing every punctuation (e.g. commas) so it has to be read like a bullet. The last four lines your target, the rest should be a straight shot.

!

[Craig Bates]

Spoken word poetry interests me very much. The sound of words becomes so important, at times more important than the meaning.
But I don't have to tell you any of that...

Very good use of sibilance/alliteration in the beginning. Sets the tone right away and rolls from the tongue beautifully.

Then internal rhyme (pains/aimed - btw, not sure if you care/this is intentional or not so sorry if it is but pains/panes?) is also nicely done. It's one of my favourite techniques in poetry and you use it well.

As I said to start with, I'm not sure of meaning. Is there one? Are the meanings of lines independent of each other? (so there are really lots of meanings...) I'm not sure. I don't think it matters. (not meaning to offend but) I see spoken word as being to poetry what typical pop music is to music as a whole. It just has to sound good.

This certainly does.